Leadership Skills in Dentistry

Leadership is a quality in someone that influences other people around them to want to do and be better. In a dental practice, leadership is the ability to not just run the practice but to manage a team with confidence, communication and compassion. Our dental coaches at Bryant Consultants are trained to help you develop and fine-tune important leadership skills to strengthen your team. The payoff is a happier work environment and a solid reputation in your community. This will most likely result in attracting new patients and retaining existing ones. Our experienced consultants have compiled a list of top leadership skills that we recommend our dentists pay special attention to and always work to improve. Here are five of them:

1. Team building

Leaders are only as strong as the teams surrounding them. The first step to building the best, most efficient team for your practice is to hire top-talent employees. Then, strategically match them based on strengths, personalities, etc. in a way that will best carry out your vision for the practice. This requires you to spend time getting to know your employees. Every quarter or so, schedule fun, team-building outings to get to know your team, show your appreciation, foster friendships and boost morale.

2. Delegating

Effective leaders and managers know the importance of delegating tasks to clear time for you to focus on leading the overall team and practice. Getting to know your staff individually will help you identify which team member has the right skill set to handle certain jobs you can delegate. Not only will you be able to trust that the work is completed correctly and on time, you’ll also be building morale and creating trusting relationships with your team members.

3. Communicating

Our consultants cannot overstate the importance of clear communication. And as the saying goes: Make sure your walk matches your talk; your honesty and integrity matter and are required to help your messaging resonate with your team.

4. Decisiveness & Determination

Your team looks to you to exhibit confidence, decisiveness and determination, especially when times are tough. If a decision is to be made, for instance, it’s important to spend time weighing all options. But unnecessary delays on important decisions can look like weakness and cost you the trust of your team members.

5. Compassion & Humility

While being confident, decisive and determined, it’s also important to show humility when you’re wrong and compassion when your valued team members are wrong or having a rough time. Apologizing when warranted will exhibit your human side, and your team members will respect you for it.  Show your employees that you care about them and what’s going on in their lives. Your relationship with them is more than boss-employee; you’re also fellow humans and friends. Leadership qualities are important for any dentist to effectively lead their staff and fulfill their practice’s vision. Not everyone is born to be a leader, and it takes more than strong will and determination to be one (although those are important qualities to have, too). Part of our job as consultants is to help hone leadership qualities in our dental partners and monitor results, recommending changes, if necessary, along the way.